Related Stories

Enron Corp.'s former No. 2 investor relations executive who helped link former company Chairman Ken Lay and former CEO Jeff Skilling to fraud in their trial earlier this year was sentenced today to two years probation.

Paula Rieker, 52, is among 16 ex-Enron executives who have pleaded guilty to crimes and eight who testified against the failed company's former top two executives.

U.S.District Judge Melinda Harmon, who also ordered her to pay a $50,000 fine, said the sentence was appropriate given Rieker's "early and timely and meaningful" cooperation with prosecutors.

An emotional Rieker asked for probation.

"I will continue to take responsibility for my actions," she said in a choked voice.

Skilling was convicted of 19 criminal counts and could face up from 20 to 30 years in prison when he is sentenced Oct. 23. He aims to appeal.

Lay also was convicted of 10 counts in the fraud and conspiracy case with Skilling and a separate case involving his personal banking. He died July 5.

Rieker was a top investor relations executive until September 2001, when she became corporate secretary and answered directly to Lay. She remained on Enron's payroll for more than two years after the company collapsed into bankruptcy in December 2001.

She resigned in early May 2004, when her name surfaced as a target in the Justice Department's Enron investigation. She pleaded guilty to insider trading later that month.

She had received $130,000 in bonuses designed to entice key employees to stay at Enron, and signed company documents asserting she had not illegally traded stock.

Upon pleading guilty, she returned those bonuses to Enron. She also forfeited nearly $500,000 in illegal gains from stock sales to the government.

She admitted selling stock upon learning inside information in July 2001 that Enron's failing broadband unit had lost more money in the second quarter than Skilling had told Wall Street it would lose all year.

During the Lay-Skilling trial, Rieker testified that she believed Skilling deliberately misled analysts about the broadband unit's income during a quarterly earnings conference call, saying most came from operations rather than asset sales.

She also testified that Enron's directors were "outraged" when they learned after Lay was pushed out in early January 2002 that the ex-chairman had repaid more than $70 million in company loans with Enron stock throughout 2001 _ even as Enron was spiraling.

"He was using Enron like a damn ATM machine," Rieker quoted former Enron director John Duncan as saying. Duncan did not testify in the trial.

Rieker is among several ex-Enron executives and admitted felons to be sentenced after the Lay-Skilling trial ended and prosecutors no longer need their cooperation.

Last month, Andrew Fastow, the former chief financial officer who concocted schemes to cook Enron's books while enriching himself on the side, was sentenced to six years in prison for two counts of conspiracy. His sentence came a week after David Delainey, former head of Enron's failed retail energy unit, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for insider trading.

Two other former lower-level executives have been sentenced to probation as well. Timothy DeSpain, former assistant treasurer, received four years' probation last month and in June, Larry Lawyer, a former mid-level broadband unit executive, received probation for two years.